


Sandwiches

by sunryder



Series: Fluff Bingo [3]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Cooking, First Dates, Fluff, M/M, Oblivious Will Graham
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:48:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23921839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunryder/pseuds/sunryder
Summary: Bev ran soothing hands over Will's shoulders. “We’ve officially moved out of the ‘teasing you because this is ridiculous’ phase of things and into the, ‘I might be your only friend who’s good with other people’ phase of things.” She paused and then came right out with it. “Are you dating Hannibal?"
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Series: Fluff Bingo [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1723501
Comments: 44
Kudos: 450





	Sandwiches

**Author's Note:**

> For the Fluff Bingo prompt, "Date Night."

“Don’t be pissed.”

“Why would I be… pissed?” Hannibal swirled the strange profanity around his tongue with the same expression he wore when Will made him eat drive-thru French fries.

“I’m in the mood for tuna fish.”

“That is redundant. A person wouldn’t ask for ‘salmon fish.’”

“They might if the salmon was coming from a can.” Hannibal didn’t flinch, but it was damn close. “Oh, Hannibal,” Will grinned, “I’m so excited for when we talk about Spam.” 

“I survived a soviet famine, William. I am familiar with Spam and have no intention of eating it ever again.” 

Other people might apologize for accidentally bringing up a reminder of Hannibal’s childhood. Will didn’t. If Hannibal didn’t want to share, he had a thousand other grounds of objection to Spam. Will paid back Hannibal’s sharing, though. “Tuna fish is a comfort food.”

Hannibal did not sigh “Could I prevail upon you to consider your comfort food fresh?”

“You’re not allowed to hand me a seared tuna steak on a bed of greens that I can’t name.”

“Greens that you can identify are permissible then?”

Will could just see Hannibal using dandelions to be an ass. “Tuna fish.”

“I suppose I shall endure.”

“Have someone record you buying a can at the grocery store.” Will called to Hannibal’s departing back. The lines of Hannibal were more expressive than his face, and his shoulders somehow managed to flip Will off when his fingers never would.

Will’s snickering cut off when he turned to find Bev, Price, and Zeller had abandoned their evidence and lined up in a row to stare like they wanted their cameras out to document the scene. 

“What?” 

Price opened his mouth first. Then he licked his lips and looked to Bev. She drew in a long breath, but Zeller was the one who huffed out, “Fine, I’ll say it. What the hell?”

“Is this an ethics violation?” Price finally found his words. “Also, is it an ethics violation for us to not report _his_ ethics violation?”

“He’s not one of the people we’re required to report on.” Zeller objected.

“Isn’t he though?”

“We don’t work with him and lack enough evidence to say whether or not he’s violating ethics.”

“But we do work with him.”

“As a crime consultant, not a psychiatrist.”

“Boys!” Bev tossed up her hands. “We’re focusing on whether or not Will is dating his therapist right now, not the ethics of Will’s therapist dating him. The rules don’t matter because we’re not going to rat out Will when he’s finally getting boned.”

“There’s no boning!”

The trio had never heard Will yell at who wasn’t Jack, and only about serial killers. They blinked almost in time before Bev and Price broke into grins -- his more smirking than hers -- and Zeller grimaced at anything to do with Will, as usual. 

“Methinks the William doth protest too much.” Price sing-songed.

“There’s nothing to protest.”

“You just _told_ Hannibal Lecter to make you _tuna fish_ for dinner.” Bev went straight for the facts.

“He cooks for me sometimes.”

“Pre or post coital?”

Bev spared enough time to smack Price before she took off after Will, who didn’t have enough drama in him to actually run. “You have to admit, Will, it’s a legitimate question.”

“It’s not. We’re… _friends_.”

Bev grabbed Will by the arm and dragged him into the women’s restroom. “Okay, I’m pretty sure you having such a hard time saying the word ‘friends’ is more about you not really knowing what to do with a friend than it is about you not wanting to just ‘be friends’ with Lecter.” Will didn’t say anything. “Because if someone didn’t know you as well as I do, Graham, they would think you were ticked about being friendzoned.”

“Friendzoned?” Will tried to piece together the meaning of the word from context.

“Not the point, Graham. Are you dating your therapist?”

“No! And he’s not my therapist. Jack brought Hannibal in to rubber stamp me so I could go back in the field. He had never been my therapist and hasn’t been in an oversight position since then.”

_That_ sounded like an argument Will had laid out in his head a dozen times before until he could justify things to himself. “But you have appointments with him all the time.” 

“We just talk. We’re just… we’re friends. We have meetings because we’re friends and it’s… nice to have someone to talk to. About what I see.” Somehow, Will declaring that while he dragged fingers through his mess of hair and paced around the women’s restroom made it more heartbreaking. Bev was going to be on his side anyway, but the fluorescent visual made her more aggressive.

“You’re not going to get any objections from me, Graham. I’m all for you not carrying that shit around in your head alone.” Bev sidestepped into his pacing path. “But Will, you just told Hannibal Lecter to buy you a can of tuna fish and feed it to you for dinner. And he agreed. What’s going on?”

“There’s nothing going on!”

“Will.” 

Will worked the answer behind his teeth for solid minute, “I sleep at Hannibal’s house sometimes.”

“What?” Bev squealed. And that was fine, because Bev just realized that she’d dragged Will into the bathroom to talk about boys and high school flashbacks deserved squealing.

“Not like that! When we have a case, I sleep in one of Hannibal’s guest rooms.”

“How did that happen?”

“It was an accident. He invited me over after a case for something to eat before I drove back to Wolf Trap and I fell asleep on his couch.” Will didn’t do eye contact, but there was something particular about today’s focus on the floor.

“Did you wake up on that couch, William?” Will’s blush was answer enough. “Did Hannibal carry you to bed?” 

“I don’t want to talk about this.” He tried to step for the door, but all Bev’s respect for Will’s personal space went right out the window and she dragged him around to shake him by the shoulders.

“He carried you to bed? Please tell me he had to carry you upstairs.”

“Bev—”

“Come on, Will! This is _amazing_!”

Bev was pretty sure Will had been hoping for something to talk about this with, because he gave her that little quirk of a smile that was a full grin on other people. “He doesn’t have any bedrooms on the first floor.” 

“I love everything about this conversation. And then he made you breakfast?”

“No.” Will sounded relieved to have not been so stereotypical, but Bev wasn’t having it. 

“Did he not get a chance to make you breakfast because you panicked and ran out of his house?”

“Maybe,” Will said through gritted teeth. 

“Did you leave that poor man alone with a pan full of scrambled eggs, William?”

“No, he didn’t make anything other than coffee.”

“Which you drank?”

“Which he had a thermos of ready so I could leave.”

“Oh, that’s adorable. He knew you were going to panic and was all ready for you.”

“All right, we’re done with this.”

“How hard did you make him work to convince you to go back for dinner?” Will swallowed. “You didn’t make him work hard at all, did you?”

“I went back, so it can’t have been that hard.”

“What did he make you? Something Southern?”

“Jumbalaya.”

“Was it good?”

“It was too French.”

“Please tell me you didn’t tell him that.” Will didn’t look up. “Come on, Graham. We don’t insult the people who make us fancy French food.”

“He’d know anyway. I’m not that good an actor.”

“So, somewhere along the way, you went from being tricking into dinner and leaving his house in a panic to telling him what to make you for dinner and crashing at his place whenever there’s a case on.”

“Yes.”

“All right.” Bev ran soothing hands over his shoulders like she was straightening the lines of his flannel. “We’ve officially moved out of the ‘teasing you because this is ridiculous’ phase of things and into the, ‘I might be your only friend who’s good with other people’ phase of things.” She paused and then came right out with it. “Are you dating Hannibal? Stop, don’t answer yet. Think about it objectively. If I told you about the handsome guy who I schedule chats with several times a week, who follows me to work, who puts me up when work gets stressful, and who cooks me whatever dinner I ask for even when he hates it, what would you tell me was happening?”

“I would tell you to talk with someone who has experience in this sort of thing.”

“And yet, I have chosen to come to my smartest, best-at-understanding-human-nature-when-it-doesn’t-involve-him friend, Will Graham.”

“It is my understanding that dating does and should require a conversation where both parties are aware that they’re dating.”

“I’ve seen some romcoms that would argue otherwise, but okay. Do you _want_ these to be dates?”

“I… don’t know.”

“I’m not saying that’s a thing you have to decide tonight, but maybe it’s a thing to think about while you’re at Hannibal’s house, eating his food, sleeping in his bed.”

“It’s not his—your point is noted.”

Bev let Will retreat to his office and planned not to ask him any verbal questions about how dinner went, but there were some pointed eyebrows on the horizon. Only, Will turned up the next morning precisely on time, which had never happened before. (Will came in early when he didn’t get any sleep, or late when his sleep was full of nightmares.) He managed to avoid human interaction until lunch, when Bev ignored the unwritten rule of closed office doors when Will pulled out the fanciest tuna fish sandwich she’d ever seen. Bev stole the second half straight from Will’s adorably packed bento box to pick it apart and see why _fish_ smelled so good. (Cucumber, pickled onion, green olives, homemade mayo, and tuna poached in olive oil.)

“Holy shit.” She moaned, taking a bite from her half of the sandwich. “This is the best thing I’ve put in my mouth.”

Will flushed in pleasure and Bev smirked. “Is it the best thing _you’ve_ ever put in your mouth, William?”

“Shut up, Bev.”

“If I ask Hannibal, will he say it’s the best thing _he’s_ ever put in his mouth?”

“He’d tell you something fancier than tuna fish.”

“Fancier than going out and buying you a literal fish to cook in stupidly expensive oil?”

“Yes.”

“Would he perchance have had any recent experience sampling other kinds of meat? Like, perhaps a _rooster_ of some sort?”

“If I let you have another bite of my sandwich will you stop talking?” 

It was adorable that Will thought he was getting this sandwich back. “Nope. Because we still have to have a conversation about the hickey on your neck.” 

**Author's Note:**

> The tuna fish sandwich is absolutely Samin Nosrat’s. A recipe/video is up on YouTube. 


End file.
